For the past 50 years the World has been warned that the Earth is heating due to CO2 from fossil fuels making it necessary to decrease its use by generating power from renewable energy sources such as the heat from the Sun and the energy from the wind. The alarm recently reached an extreme level with the Secretary-General of the UN claiming that “the Earth is on fire!”. This is in spite of data showing that changes in CO2 concentration have always followed after changes in temperature as shown in the monthly Climate4you.com publication from Ole Humlum, Arctic Historical Evaluation and Research Organisation, Longyearbyen, Svalbard, in the graph “The phase relation between atmospheric CO2 and global temperature”. It is impossible for the later CO2 change to be the cause of the earliertemperature change.

The reason for the lag is revealed in an analysis of the monthly time series for CO2 concentration at the Mauna Loa Observatory and the monthly lower tropospheric temperature for the Equatorial zone from satellite measurements by the University of Alabama described in: https://climateauditor.com/mauna-loa-observatory/. This study concludes that CO2 does not affect temperature but the temperature level determines the rate of generation of atmospheric CO2.

The UN IPCC initially emphasised the idea of the atmosphere acting as a ‘blanket’ over the Earth with CO2 causing ‘back-radiation’ of heat that was warming the Earth’s surface. These notions originated in the work of John Tindal published in 1869, that is, the UN chose to rely on 19th Century physics instead of that current in the 21st Century. 

The statement that "Tyndall recognized that greenhouse gases warm Earth’s surface." is contrary to the facts. While Tyndall was meticulous in his brilliant experimental work he was not aware of the vibrational modes of the radiative gases and the associated discrete frequencies of their radiation absorption and later release. He assumed that the heat absorbed by gases inside a long thin pipe during his experiments was returned to its source. We now know that re-radiation of the heat is in every direction of three dimensional space so there is no "back-radiation" to heat the source and thus no "greenhouse effect".

The paper Wijngaarden and Happer, 2022, gave a detailed account of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere with an emphasis on CO2.The absorption and release of radiation for CO2 is stated as mainly taking place in its vibrational bending mode with a frequence of 667.4 cm^-1, i.e. a wavelength of 14.98 microns. From Wein’s law that is the peak of radiation from a black body at -79.75 °C. Such a temperature only occurs occasionally in the Antarctic so any warming could only happen there when the temperature is less that -79.75 °C. Hence the properties of CO2 gas are such that it cannot warm the whole Earth.

This is supported by the fact that the Earth is estimated to be 4.5 billion years old. The earliest geological era is named the Hadean era after Hades as the surface was covered in molten lava due to the heat generated by the influx of meteorites that coalesced to form the planet. Consequently the atmosphere contained CO2 but no oxygen. By the following Pre-Cambrian era, the surface had cooled sufficiently to have shallow saline seas rich in dissolved CO2 within which the first life forms evolved as cyanobacteria, blue-green algae. Their photosynthetic effect absorbed CO2 from the saline water, emitted oxygen and deposited calcium carbonate to form stromatolites about 3.5 billion years ago. This lead to the evolution of the multitude of Oxygen-based life forms that proliferate the Earth without the catastrophic climate events that are being predicted today. In the transition from a CO2 rich atmosphere to an Oxygen rich atmosphere the temperature of the hot surface has fallen to the present-day comfortable level so the ever-present atmospheric CO2 has not been continuously warming the Earth. 

The reason that there has been no measurable warming is revealed in the analysis of real-world data whereby the time series for the annual rate of change of CO2 concentration contains multiples of the 24 hour daily change in temperature and the monthly cycle of the Moon from New Moon, the Moon passing between the Sun and the Earth, to Full Moon when the Moon is on the opposite side from the Sun so the Earth receives its full irradiance. However the most significant cycle is the 1330 day El Niño event. The atmospheric CO2 can not be the cause these events, it is the temperature change associated with the events that causes the change in the rate of generation of CO2. The detail may be seen in the web page article at: https://climateauditor.com/mauna-loa-weekly-co2-concentration-data/

CO2 is a simple molecule consisting of two oxygen atoms in line and either side of a central carbon atom. It is a colourless, odourless stable gas that does not generate heat in any way so it cannot cause a rise in temperature of the environment. Furthermore, it has vibrational modes set in motion when it absorbs a photon of a discrete radiation frequency appropriate to energy involved in that motion. The centre of gravity of the molecule is at its geometric centre so its orientation is independent of the gravity field. Also it does not have a magnetic moment that would cause it to align with the magnetic field. Thus its orientation in 3D space is completely random so the direction of absorption and re-radiation of photons is also random and there is no back radiation as a molecule has no knowledge of that direction. Hence there is no "greenhouse" effect, the CO2 molecules pass on heat already in the environment, in any direction with no added energy that would cause warming.

The alarm over using fossil fuels is a complete sham.

Bevan Dockery, B.Sc.(Hons-Maths), Grad. Dip. Computing, Certificate-RadioIsotope

Course- Australian School of Nuclear Technology, retired geophysicist.

An added Note

 CO2 is not a pollutant. It is a plant food that is essential to all life on Earth. Photosynthesis is a blessing. More CO2 is beneficial for nature, greening the Earth: additional CO2 in the air has promoted growth in global plant biomass. It is also good for agriculture, increasing the yields of crops worldwide.

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